


Transformative

by tuesday



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Sailor Moon Fusion, Animal Transformation, Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Implied/Referenced Minor Character Death, Minor Deadpool, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 08:41:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19059163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuesday/pseuds/tuesday
Summary: In which Peter Parker is suddenly living in a magical girl anime.





	Transformative

**Author's Note:**

  * For [labocat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/labocat/gifts).



There were a few moments of Peter's life in a very short period of time that were transformative, moments where he could look at before and look at after and see where everything had changed, where he'd never go back to seeing the world in the same way again. Or maybe it wasn't so much everything that changed as Peter did in response.

The first that year was being bitten by a radioactive spider. He gained superpowers, though he didn't use them. He was a kid. He didn't know what he was doing. He thought maybe he should grow up a little first.

The second was Uncle Ben being shot. That was enough growing up for anyone.

The third was becoming Spider-Man, though that was closely related to the first and second.

The fourth was _Tony Stark_ showing up _in his living room_. Mr. Stark wanted to take him to Germany. Peter wasn't sure he was ready for Germany. Mr. Stark took him anyway.

The fifth happened a couple weeks after he got back. He was patrolling, he was calling Happy every day to report in, and he was going to school. He was settling into a new normal, a normal in which at any point he might get called up on Avengers business. It was exciting and it was weird, and he was really, really hopeful. He'd gotten to keep the suit! He'd helped _Tony Stark_ fight _Captain America_. And maybe there was a bit of a lull, but Peter expected that to change any day now.

When it did, it wasn't what he'd expected. There was a cat trapped in a dumpster outside his building, yowling its head off. Peter had been on his way out, but this was a good place to start. When Peter lifted the lid, the cat looked up at him with shining brown eyes. It was crouched in a pile of garbage bags. Metal twine was tangled around its legs. Its fur was a dirty, matted brown. It stopped yowling and whined.

"Hey, hey," Peter said softly, trying and failing to remember how to approach a strange cat. Not that there was much choice. The cat wasn't going anywhere, and Peter was going to have to climb into the dumpster to get it out. "Shh, shh. Easy now. It's okay. I'm here to help."

The dumpster smelled awful, even worse from the inside, but it wasn't as bad as it might have been without the mask Mr. Stark had given him. It was great at cutting down on input and an absolute lifesaver right now. Or maybe lunch-saver. Peter gagged as his feet slid on something through the thin plastic of one of the bags. He crouched down and held his hand out, not right in the cat's face. He extended his forefinger. The cat sniffed at him and whined again.

"I'm going to pick you up now," Peter said, hoping that the cat would react to the gentle tone, even if the content was so much unintelligible noise to it. "Please don't bite me."

He picked it up. The cat didn't bite him. Peter climbed back out of the dumpster slowly, trying not to jolt the little guy. He had one arm under its back legs, and its front legs, still wrapped in twine, were draped over his shoulder. Once they were out, Peter set the cat down carefully, then went to work unwinding the wire wrapped around its legs. To his surprise, it didn't struggle at all, just sat there, quietly resigned. When he was done, it didn't run off.

Peter looked at it. It stared back at him.

"I'm taking you home, aren't I?" Peter said.

He sighed. He picked the cat back up. He took it home.

—

The first thing he did was give the cat a bath. In the process, he found out it was male. The cat took the bath with the same long-suffering silence as he had endured Peter freeing him from the dumpster and twine, like he hated it, but knew it was being done to help.

"Sorry, buddy," Peter said as he rinsed the cat down with warm water one last time. "Almost done."

The first set of water had gone a murky grey. This time, the spray from the nozzle head came out clear. All the dirt and dust and grime had washed away to reveal a lustrous brown coat. On its forehead, it had a little circle of fur a dark, shiny black that was almost blue.

Peter grabbed a towel and gently patted the cat down. "You know, you're rather pretty under all that gunk. You've had a tough time of it, huh?"

"Kid, you have no idea," the cat said.

"You can talk!" Peter's life was weird. Apparently this sort of thing just happened now. "That's so cool. Can you talk to anyone, or can I talk to animals now?"

"Nothing about this is cool," the cat said. "This isn't the worst day of my life, but only because the competition is so fierce."

"Wow, you sound kind of like Mr. Stark. Do you have a name? If you don't have a name, I'm going to call you Tony." Peter kept rubbing the cat down gently. "Can you tell me if you hurt anywhere? Do I need to take you to a vet? Do you have an owner I can get you back to?"

"Whoa, slow your roll. One question at a time." The cat backed up a little, shrugging off the damp towel. "First off, yes, I have a name. Yes, you can call me Tony, which I told you the first time we met, which was here, in your Queens apartment. I sound like me because I am me, just a me that has been turned into a cat after—it doesn't matter. Look, kid, it wasn't an accident you found me. I was looking for you."

"You're telling me you're Mr. Stark." Peter put the towel aside as the cat hopped out of the sink and onto the counter.

"Yep."

"Tony Stark."

"Yes."

"Iron Man."

"No, I'm the other Tony Stark you've met and who took you to Germany." The cat looked unimpressed with him, and Peter didn't think it was just because sometimes cats looked like that. " _Yes_. I'm Tony Stark."

"You expect me to believe _Tony Stark_ would let me give him a sink bath after fishing him out of the dumpster?"

"The last person I talked to threw me in that dumpster when I was just asking for directions, so yes, I went with it when you suggested a bath. You didn't expect me to actually lick myself clean, did you?"

Which. Fair. Peter wouldn't want to lick himself clean if he were turned into a cat, either.

"So why a cat?" Peter asked.

"Because you're a magical girl, and apparently there is an order to these things. A terrible, terrible order."

"Uh. I am very much not a girl. I think I'd know. Like. It's never been a question for me." Other things, yeah, but not that. "And I mean, being able to lift a bus is cool and all, but there's nothing magical about that?"

"It's more of a category," the cat said dismissively. "Your gender's not important. You're a high schooler with powers and a wise older mentor figure who gave you the ability to transform yourself into another identity you had in you all along. All of which was fine, perfectly normal, but someone flipped the script, and we went from a mainstream Western superhero movie to an anime aimed at teenage girls. Which somehow necessitated _turning me into a cat_."

Peter nodded along seriously until the cat was done, then shook his head as he said, "None of that made any sense. I mean, the powers, yes, but the rest of it? Nope. Not a bit."

"Considering my source, not making sense is about the best we're going to get, there." The cat looked down at his front paw, holding it up and flipping it over to examine the pink toe beans. "Honestly, I wasn't sure he wasn't a hallucination. I'd hoped he was a hallucination. But no, not that lucky."

"Your source?" Peter asked.

"Some guy named Deadpool. He was carrying a katana. Looked like he was trying to rip off your shtick with all the red and the full face mask, but apparently that's to hide the blood stains." The cat sighed. "Look, I know you don't believe me. I don't want to believe me, either. I would really, really like for this all to be a terrible hallucination I'm having in my final moments in Siberia, but Steve didn't kill me, and I came back to New York and dropped you off at home, so here we are, not part of the last vision of a dying fool who didn't bother to bring back-up. I lived to be turned into a cat when some maniac with reality-bending powers decided they'd rather live in an anime."

Peter didn't know about the rest of that, but he latched onto, "Reality-bending powers?"

"Turned. Into. A. Cat."

"Tell me something only Mr. Stark would know," Peter challenged him.

"Oh, for—" The cat straightened. "Bring your suit here. I'll turn off the training wheels. Would that be enough for you?"

"There are training—? Wait. I'm not letting someone mess with the suit unless I know it's Mr. Stark! That was a gift."

"Gift, talisman to ward off guilt. They're like the same thing." The cat sighed. "Fine. You know what? This was a terrible idea. I'll do it myself. I'm a cat, small, almost unnoticeable. There has to be a way back into my building to get access to FRIDAY again, and from there—"

The cat hopped down off the counter. He made it all the way to the door. Peter watched him stare up at the round knob in something like despair. "Oh, for—" The cat looked back at Peter expectantly. "Little help here?"

He was a cat. And yet somehow, something in that face, those annoyed brown eyes, reminded Peter so strongly of his teen idol standing exasperated and amused in Peter's bedroom, hand stuck to the bedroom door, that Peter had to ask, "Mr. Stark?"

"Can't get the door on my own," Mr. Stark said impatiently.

"I believe you," Peter said.

—

"So what's the plan?" Peter asked.

" _You_ are going to take me to my building, where _I_ am going to enact some protocols that allow me to remote pilot my suit. I'll get FRIDAY to locate the plucky young— _annoying—_ annoying young kid who's warped reality so bad I keep trying to exposition dump every time I open my mouth." Mr. Stark climbed up onto Peter's shoulder. "Seriously, this is terrible. Bad enough I got turned into a cat, but she had to turn me into a walking plot device, too?"

"I have access to your building?" Wow.

"No." Mr. Stark cocked his head. His piercing stare went straight through Peter's briefly boosted ego like a pin through a balloon. "You're going to scale the side of it, and I'm going to use my codes and voice recognition to get us through the landing pad door."

"Oh." Peter put a hand out to steady Mr. Stark. He couldn't help stroking down the silky length of his spine. "Should I bring my backpack?"

"Not actually a cat," Mr. Stark said, and Peter snatched his hand back. "And yeah, probably a good idea. Just—don't drop me."

"I won't drop you," Peter promised.

—

Peter dropped him.

In his defense, there was a small child on a flying shadow who attacked him around the thirtieth floor. Peter didn't want to try to web the kid up and accidentally knock them off the flying shadow. It was a long drop. Most people didn't have the superpowers to survive that. Speaking of, Peter aimed down and slung a web, snagging the backpack with a yowling Mr. Stark. Apparently he reverted to cat instincts under stress.

"Can't we talk about this?" Peter asked the kid.

"Trying to reach me with the power of friendship, huh?" the kid asked. "Well, it won't work! I have only darkness in my heart. Some of us must live in the shadows, that others can know the light!"

"You're what, seven? What do you know about darkness?" Peter asked. This was a mistake.

"I'll show you," the kid said. "Feel the power of my heart!"

They made a gesture, and a—beam?—of shadow lanced out. Peter moved to the side, and it shattered the glass behind him. He tumbled into the building, pulling the backpack up after him. He unzipped it and unceremoniously dumped Mr. Stark out.

"Sorry, Mr. Stark. This might not be your stop, but it's where you get off."

Mr. Stark went tearing out of the bag and bounding across the room, through the door, and around the corner. Peter could hear Mr. Stark skitter down the hall as he threw himself back out of the building through the broken window.

"Even your animal companion has abandoned you," the small child said, standing and gesturing grandly. "It knows my true power and wisely fears it."

"So are you the reality warper, or did they think you would make a good villain?" Peter asked.

"Who's the real villain?" the kid asked. "Me, the Shadow Colossus, Master of the Fates—"

"Not calling you that," Peter said. Weren't those video games?

"—or you, stooge for The Man in a really stupid costume?"

"I think this costume's really cool, actually," Peter said.

"You would. And now, you will die." The kid made another gesture, and they were back at it again, shadows striking and Peter dodging. He hopped and he swung. He clung to the side of the building and crab-walked up it.

"You never answered my question!" Peter called as he decided that it might be safer to web the kid after all.

"Why won't you just hold still?" the kid said as they broke yet another window.

At least, Peter reflected, Mr. Stark could afford to replace them. Still. Even if all of the rooms were empty, someone was going to get hurt at this rate, and that someone was probably going to be Peter. Peter ended up back by the thirtieth floor again and went in through the opening. His next web went right through the shadow the kid was riding on, but the one after that caught on the kid's dark, trailing sleeve. After that, stuck in place, it was easy for Peter to web them up and reel them in.

Once their hands were webbed, they stopped being able to summon the shadow spears. Once they were inside, the flying shadow dissipated, and they fell to the office carpet. Up close, Peter wondered if maybe seven had been guessing a little high for their age.

"Please tell me I didn't just assault a kindergartner," Peter said.

"Kinder—I'm in third grade!" the kid spluttered. "I'll have you know I'm due a growth spurt any day now!"

On consideration, that wasn't much better. Peter sighed. He patted the kid on the head. "So what's your name?"

"I told, I am the Shadow Colossus, Master of—"

"Still not calling you that," Peter interrupted.

"You're the real villain here," the kid said and kicked Peter in the shin. Peter picked them up. They bit him.

It didn't get better from there.

—

Peter brought the struggling kid with him further into the building. A voice had issued from a hidden speaker and said, "Mr. Parker. Please bring the sprog upstairs. The boss wants to speak with you both."

There was an elevator. They took it up.

The elevator didn't let them out at the very top, but it did let them out much higher up. The voice from the speaker directed them down the hall and through an open door into an office. Mr. Stark was sitting on the desk, tail lashing. In front of him, sitting in the large leather desk chair, her head barely visible over the top of the desk, was another small child. Where the one struggling in Peter's arms had a shadow motif going, this one was all sunshine and light. She was wearing a bright yellow sundress and a large, floppy straw hat with a sunflower attached by a blue ribbon. She was beaming right at them.

"Wasn't this fun?" she said.

"Yeah. Sure. Loads of fun. But playtime's over. Here's your friend. Time for everyone to go home."

"But, Mr. Stark," her smile never wavered, "I don't want to go home."

"We don't always get what we want. Case in point: I never wanted to know what it felt like to have whiskers, but here we are."

" _You_ don't want me to go home," she said. Her eyes glowed.

"I don't—no. No. I'm not falling for this again." Tony's hackles were up. "Hey, Peter, you're a magical girl. Don't you have a, a purifying heart crystal or some other magic bullshit that will counter this?"

No. Peter did not. What he did have, though, was a size advantage. Feeling like a terrible bully, he crossed the room, picked up the second kid, and said, very firmly, "It's time for you to go home."

The kid burst into tears.

"So your new superpower is making small children cry." Tony tilted his head. "You know what? I'll take it."

"Um. Actually." Huh. "I think I'm like some kind of power nullifier? At least, for them, when I'm in close proximity."

"This is the worst reality," the girl said. "I don't want to play with you anymore."

"Oh, thank goodness. It was getting really boring waiting for you to get bored on your own." Peter hadn't noticed the guy to this point, but suddenly, there he was, tall and dressed in red and carrying a katana.

"Oh, good." Mr. Stark didn't sound enthused. "It's you again."

The guy nodded at Mr. Stark, then at Peter. He said, "Babysitting is _the worst_. I'm glad they didn't want to come sooner. You were cute at the Stark Expo and all, but seriously, three of you little brats? And let's not even talk about Daddy Warbucks over here. He was like five children all on his own as a full grown adult. Maybe he's not as fun with time having ground him down, but at least it made my job a little easier. And if we'd come later? The mini Stark is _adorable_ , but having tea time with Purple Chinsack would be such a drag. No one should let that man around children." The guy dropped his voice into a carrying whisper and repeated, "No one."

"You're their babysitter?" Peter asked uncertainly.

"I know, I know. Maybe I shouldn't have left them unattended by the portals to other universes." The guy in red shrugged and raised his hands. New details kept filtering in, like the blood spatter on his gloves. "But when you gotta go, you gotta go. And hey, it gave me an excuse to go on a little side trip, make sure there'd be no future tea time. You should thank me."

"For killing someone?" Peter asked.

Deadpool slumped. "You really are a magical girl. Too magical for me." He grabbed the children from Peter's grip while he tried to parse that. "This was fun. Let's do it again sometime. I hear your contract is running out again soon. Or hey, Disney's buying everything, and I do mean everything. Soon they'll have a monopoly on the multi-verse."

"Let's go." The shadow kid put his hand in Deadpool's, ignoring the blood. "You can come back later if you want to."

"I'm ready to go home after all," the girl said.

The three disappeared.

"What," Peter said faintly, "was that?"

"Those assholes left me like this!" said Mr. Stark.

—

Mr. Stark stayed a cat for a little while. He made Peter explain the situation to Happy and Ms. Potts.

"Only you, Tony," Ms. Potts said.

"This is not my fault," Mr. Stark insisted.

"Is there anything else I can do?" Peter asked.

"Go home," Mr. Stark said. "Stay out of trouble. We'll call you when we need you. Try not to pick up any more talking animals or make new friends. Maybe they'll come back and fix it before the world finishes changing genres."

—

Peter did try to stay out of trouble, but, well, it wasn't like he was going to stop patrolling. It started off fine, just your average day of bike thieves and lost tourists. Then things got … weirder.

—

Mr. Stark showed up about the time the huge shadow monster had picked Peter up by the ankle and started shaking him like it hoped loose change would fall out.

"Kid, you need to use your power!"

"Which power?" Peter wanted to know. "Because if it's the nullifying one, I'm already as close as it's possible to be to this thing without being inside of it! And I really don't want to let it eat me!"

The shadowy blob didn't have a mouth, but Peter was kind of worried anyway. It seemed like he was having that sort of day.

For a cat, Mr. Stark was able to convey a whole lot of frustration and disgust as he said, "I think this is where I'm supposed to talk about the power of friendship."

The shadow monster made a confused noise.

"Is that right?" Peter asked it. "Do you want to be friends?"

The shadow monster started shaking Peter even more vigorously. It smacked him into the sidewalk.

"Mr. Stark, I don't think it wants to be friends!"

"Then use the power of explosions," Mr. Stark said.

"That's not one of my powers!"

"It is now."

Peter missed whatever Mr. Stark did next, but an Iron Man suit appeared. Its repulsors could have made quick work of the monster, considering the whole shadows and light thing, but no. It flew overhead and dropped something small and compact. Peter managed to flail out a hand and catch it. It was … a spider broach.

"What do I do with this?"

"The genre change pushed forward my nanotech timeline by a lot. All you need to do is put it on and," Mr. Stark sighed, "say, 'Iron spider power, make up.' It's a thing. An unavoidable thing. There are drawbacks to the faster dev time. A lot of drawbacks."

Peter pushed the broach against his chest. "Iron spider power, make up?"

There was—a thing. A moment of light and sparkles and Peter being naked while floating in the air. He might change in alleyways sometimes, but this was seriously less than ideal. When it was over, Peter was covered head to toe in a new Spider-Man suit. It had a bow over his chest and what felt like another over his ass.

"What—? Why—? Is this a—?" Peter's spluttering thoughts were interrupted by the monster making another grab for him now that he'd escaped its grasp through the power of naked magical tech transformations, and he jumped out of the way. Okay, right. Giant shadow monster first. "How do I activate my new explosion powers?"

Mr. Stark talked him through it. Apparently, there were activation phrases and gestures. Also, they were less explosions and more beams of light that ate through the shadows. It was actually kind of fun now that Peter was no longer getting smacked against the sidewalk.

When it was over, the shadow monster was gone, revealing a confused middle-aged woman who said, "How did I get here? I was at Macy's."

"New plan," Mr. Stark said. "You're coming back to the tower with me, and we're going to figure out what we can do to stop this, or at least slow it down."

—

When they got back to the tower, Deadpool was there again. He had just the sunshine-themed child with him this time.

"Now what do we say to Mr. Stark?" Deadpool said.

"I'm sorry," the little girl said.

"And?"

"And I would absolutely do it again."

"Good girl," Deadpool said, patting her on the head. He gave her a lollipop.

The girl's eyes glowed. Mr. Stark was no longer a cat. The girl shoved the candy in her mouth. Around it, she said, "Can we go now?"

"Gonna change the rest of the world back?" Deadpool asked.

"No."

Deadpool shrugged. "Then yeah, sure, we can go."

"What, no—" Peter said, because _he didn't want to be a magical girl_.

The pair disappeared again.

Mr. Stark frantically patted himself down starting at the top of his head. "Hands, I have hands."

"Mr. Stark, are you … okay?"

"I am now," Mr. Stark said. Then, "Be right back." He booked it down the hall, opened up a door, and closed himself in what looked like a supply closet.

Peter decided he wasn't going to ask. Mr. Stark came back out again in a minute.

"Don't look at me like that. I needed to make sure all the fur was gone."

"Uh huh." Peter still wasn't going to ask. "So. What are we going to do about the shadow people?"

"We'll figure it out." Mr. Stark eyed Peter for a moment, then said, "Come on, let's go upstairs. It looks like we're stuck with each other for awhile."

Stuck wasn't how Peter would have put it, but he'd take it.

—

There were a few moments in Peter's life that were transformative. Getting bitten by a spider. His uncle. Meeting Mr. Stark.

And then, of course, there was being turned into a magical girl.

On the plus side, he wasn't the only one.

—

"You mean," Ned said, cautiously pulling out a broach of his own, "that you have superpowers, too?"


End file.
